1XD Changing Hearts
by VAPX007
Summary: Dime-a-dozen romance fic. Let's see, this story has something to do with Artron energy, the Tardis, a timeline jaunt, two people who deeply care about each other and a happy ending. Oh, and Doctor's POV from chap 2-6. It's M rated for the fifth chapter so you can avoid. I had to write this because I accidentally read something rather horrifically the opposite and I needed medicine.
1. Changing Hearts 1

_A/n: I don't own Doctor Who. I also don't own this website. I can't control what's on this website, and sometimes I can't even control my own idle curiosity that gets me into strife._

_A/n: __This is a dime-a-dozen trashy romance story so _listen very carefully: I shall only edit this once. _If I have too many floating objects in blank white rooms and the phrasing isn't right for the character then so be it._

_A/n: Please don't get traumatised. It's only M Rated in the second last chapter and I shall warn you at the top of that page in bold letters so you can skip it easily. _

* * *

**REGENERATION**

* * *

The Lady woke up next to the Tardis console. She squinted up at the light. It was suddenly so light in the control room. The light had started before she fainted and it hadn't given her a break yet.  
"Lit up like a jack-o-lantern, I am." She muttered dragging herself up to a sitting position. She put her hand to her chest, 'at least my hearts are both working. Will-o-wisps don't have hearts. S'gotta mean I'm alive.'

"Oh, she's awake!"  
"Young lady are you alright?"

The Lady blinked at the voices and the shapes of the people around her came better into form. "Doctor?" Her mind latched tightly onto the fringe of his telepathic field and his natural confidence assured her that everything was going to come out alright. "Oh, thank goodness you're alright. I don't know what I'd do without you."

At this moment the Lady decided there were other people in the Tardis with them. "Hello?" She blinked again. The light was still quite dazzling but she was adjusting. Meanwhile she had a go at seeking a telepathic reading on them. "Oh, humans." She decided with a smile that since they were travelling with the Doctor they would have to be friendly. "Hello, there." A wave of energy surged through her and she jumped up on her feet. "I don't think we've been formally introduced." She bowed cheerily at them. "You are?"

"My name's Ian, this is Barbara."  
"Oh, lovely. Ian's such a nice name, too. Ian, eeyan, eeyaan." The Lady toyed with his name absently, her attention moving on to the Tardis console. "So, what's going on then?" She asked the Tardis, gently petting the console as she took in the readings.  
'Normal, faulty, normal, normal, failing, disconnected ... okay, last one's normal.'

"Excuse me, young lady, but who is it that you think you are?"  
The Lady looked up at him with a start. The Doctor blinked back at her completely unknowing of who she was. He was holding himself both physically and mentally in that stubborn defensive posture he sometimes took up. Trouble with it was she wasn't a Dalek she was a Jack-o-lantern so his words slipped like butter into her mind, warming her insides … really warming her insides.

"This is how you get people to travel with you." She retorted, "Give them some old chat up line that they can't resist, well, not me, sunshine. Say 'young lady' again and I might have to do something about it." She gulped as her insides fluttered with the idea of what she would do suddenly zooming into her the centre of her thoughts. Looking quickly back at the readouts the Lady found a way to get out of the room and away from the charming devil. "There's a replacement for the damaged circuit in the gadgets room. I'll fetch it."  
"Gadgets room?"  
"Oh, you know ..." She backed away from him towards the internal door, her hearts starting to speed up just to feel him looking so intensely at her, his telepathic attention turning onto her. Her legs didn't seem to work like they should be anymore and she stumbled for a moment. "The home of the whatchamacallits and the thingamabobs, you know, jumble sale bric n' brac, the odds and ends, bits and bobs. It's where all the whirligigs and whizz-bang things live."  
"Young-."

The Lady didn't let him finish. At the door she twisted and pelted for the spare parts room. 'What the heck is going on with me? I'm too old for all of this butterfly-in-the-stomach nonsense.' She breathed, locking the door behind her. 'And this is the Doctor. My mate!'  
Another surge of energy jagged through her body and she staggered forwards, clutching onto the edge of the work table in front of her. It was an incredible sensation to have; that feeling of being somewhere between dying and being perfectly fine. Hot tears sprang into her eyes. Something was wrong with her. 'Focus, focus. Something calming.'

'Help fix the Tardis.'

'Help the Doctor.' She knelt down to the floor scouting around for the box on the lower shelf of the open cupboard that she knew held the part. "There you are you sneaky little devil." She said aloud and reached out for it.

Her hand was glowing.

The Lady snapped her hand back and looked at her flesh. Glowing, she was glowing! The Lady stared in terror at her hand. It didn't even look like her hand. It was the wrong shape with long bony fingers. Gradually the glowing went away.

"Ohmigosh!" She exclaimed quietly to herself, putting her hands to her face. It was different too. It felt like she had a narrow face with a pointy chin. She jumped up and looked down at herself. Her clothes hung loose and inelegant and her legs were all long and lanky. "I've regenerated ..." and she didn't know how to feel about all this.

The Lady stumbled with her ridiculously longer legs and over to the other side of the room, looking for that odd looking mirror she'd seen a while back in her memories. "I'm not me anymore." She stared at the strawberry blonde ringlets, the thin pointy face, the high cheekbones and the bright blue eyes. "Blue eyes!" She exclaimed. "Who am I? I ... I dunno anymore!"

Another flush of Artron energy made her put the mirror down and grab at the ledge of the shelf for support. A minute ago all she'd wanted was to get away from the Doctor and his mischievous charms and wiles that were making her insides ache for him. It was probably no wonder that he should call her 'young' since she looked a quarter of a human century younger now and he currently looked three quarters of a century older. It was a perfectly understandable mistake.

If it was a mistake.

"Get it together!" She told herself off, rubbing her head and worked to focus her mind on finding the spare part.


	2. Changing Hearts 2

_A/N: Listen very carefully: I shall edit this __only __once._

* * *

**THINGY**

* * *

The Tardis control room was a friendly open space with a floor of polished white. The walls had a clean glowing white expression with each circular shape adding airy light on to the hexagonal six person operator console in the centre. Apart from the default desktop theme it had a few extra items that had taken the Doctor's fancy from his rummaging around in the Foreman junkyard including a solid wooden chair, a hatstand and a couple stray high school teachers.

"Who is she, Doctor?" Ian Chesterton with his arms crossed in front of his fuzzy brown woolen vest asked.  
"And you expect me to know such a thing, young man?" The Doctor huffed, looking at the console and doing his best to figure out what the mysterious young woman had figured out about the damages to the Tardis working mechanisms.

"Well, but she seems to know the Tardis." Ian continued to prod him. "And she sure seems to know you."  
"Do not jostle me, Chesterton. If I knew the answers to such things I would not have asked the question in the first place for myself and then, just supposing if she had indeed answered me, why then we both would know the answer and so there would hardly be any reason for you to assail me with your questions now." The Doctor snapped.

* * *

For the Doctor his irritation at having to explain such a simple matter was only the tip of the iceberg, unfortunately. He was still struggling with tempering the Tardis. She liked that he had taken her back out into the time vortex but she didn't like that he had stolen her. He couldn't quite explain to her clearly enough of what her other fate would have been had he not taken her. Or still, perhaps he had explained and that was why she was having such a tantrum. He couldn't quite be sure.

And this Ian was consistently in the Doctor's other ear. The school teacher was on his case all the time, challenging normal Time Lord procedures, and interfering against normal Time Lord protocols. There was a certain primitive logic in Ian's actions; if he created enough of a nuisance to get the Doctor to want to remove him but still be of enough use of himself to temper the Doctor's ill-favour. In such a way Ian operated to convince the Doctor to take him back to Earth rather than leave him on some random planet.

Then of course there was the Doctor's own condescending voice in his head which was probably the most beastly of all. It reminded him constantly of his faults and failings not in the least being his inability to properly grasp the pompous terminology in the Tardis technical manual and not at the most being his aching grinding bones.

And now there was this young woman who seemed to know better than he about his own ship. What had she seen in these status readouts?

* * *

"You don't know, do you?" Ian broke in over the Doctor's thoughts. There was a glimmer of bitter triumph in Ian's voice.

To this answer the Doctor accepted there was indeed a lot he didn't know. However he was not interested in being lectured or being commiserated with. Furthermore Ian was clearly going on about some particular thing since it was one of Ian's finer qualities for being a man of specific reasoning. Although he most certainly objected when it came to the moral ground this human did not dwell on holistic universal philosophies for which he could scarce comprehend and even scarcer take action.

The Doctor looked up at Ian in defiance. "Hmm, and what would that be, Chesterton?" He said as casually as he could.  
"She's gone off to get a part, and you don't know what it's for."  
"Oh, Ian, do leave him alone, please." Barbara took Ian's arm.  
"Somewhat ambiguous, don't you suppose?" The Doctor countered triumphantly. "Thingamabobs indeed!" He larked.

* * *

"Thingamabobs, grandfather?"

The Doctor glanced up to Susan coming through the doorway with her long stripey green Thrall cloak in her arms. "Oh, the Lady's gone, where's she gone?"  
"To get a ... replacement thingamajig for the whoseiwhatsit." Ian said as impertinent as he could be. "Isn't that right, Doctor?" He chuckled.  
"You are in fighting form today, aren't you, Ian?" The Doctor retorted dryly. "I am myself far more interested in knowing where this woman has come from."

"She just ... appeared out of thin air." Barbara shrugged. "There was a flash of light and here she was. It was like magic."  
"It was that big burst of Artron energy, grandfather." Susan offered, "I'm sure it came from the Tardis' console. Surely that has something to do with her being here?"  
"Yes, I think it might, child. I think it might." The Doctor mused, looking back over the recent status readings and trying to find out what the Tardis knew about this.

* * *

"Here we are then." The Lady announced with a song in her voice, stepping in through the doorway. The Doctor noticed her steps were slightly hesitant just the same as when she had left. The nervous tension in her demeanour was quite hard to miss. He wasn't sure why and it wasn't a fond realisation but the poor girl was at least a little bit scared of him.

Nevertheless for her emotional uncertainty she came up to him and held her arm straight, holding out the circuit for him to take. There was a wide smile on her face. "You're in luck, Doctor; there's still five left in the box."

The Doctor recognised the Sterometer component for the Astrosextant Rectifier the instant he saw it. "What box, where?"  
"I told you, silly." She giggled girlishly and turned away from him to greet Susan. "Oh, hello there, you must be Susan." She smiled back at the Doctor. There was a strange mania in her eyes that he hadn't quite seen before. "She really is beautiful, Doctor."  
"..." He refrained from saying 'young lady' as the term had seemed to upset her earlier, "my dear, I have been through that room with a fine tooth comb and I did not find this piece of equipment."  
The madness in her eyes faded back to normal on his words and she spun around the console with a flourish. "Yeah. You looked with a fine tooth comb, a walking stick, and rheumatic arthritis in the lower spine and a boyish impatience to boot. Oh, look we're landing."  
The Doctor saw the landing light the moment she pointed it out and he jumped as fast as he could to the master controls. The Lady took up position on the opposite side, handling the secondary operator stations on that side.

* * *

It was the quietest landing he ever had managed with his own hands on the controls. It was frankly rather incredible this woman, since she was clearly a Time Lord but her most harshest words to him over his nature were 'boyish impatience' which frankly hadn't struck him as an insult at all given the gentleness in her tone.

"There we are then." the Lady said in her sing-song voice with a flourish of her arms, stepping away from the console with a flounce. "Or should I say here we are now" she laughed.  
"Yes." Ian said, "only where is here? It doesn't look like Earth wherever it is."

The Doctor hurriedly stepped back as the Lady skirted around the console with so much energy it made his bones ache. It had been a long time since he'd been this young and at the time he'd been so caught up in doing his duty he'd missed out on all the running around. It was his one regret and he had only come to this realisation after Susan had prompted a discussion on it one evening on Gallifrey. Time Lords spent their whole lives acting old.

"Arctarion Three? Now there's a bit of rubbish!" The Lady spun around the console again and then waved at the view screen of outside the ship. "Earth like atmosphere, safe for humans, terrain is a bit all over the place so watch your step. Doctor, what do you reckon? We should probably replace the Sterometer component, yeah? It's occasionally nice to see where we're heading, don't you think?"

"Look here, miss," Ian intervened, "I'm sorry, but will you tell us all kindly who you are and where you came from?"


	3. Changing Hearts 3

_A/n: Listen very carefully. I shall edit this only once._

* * *

**DUTY**

* * *

The Lady swirled on the spot beside the white coloured master console. Her shoulder length ringlets of strawberry blonde hair swung around after her.

"I'm the Missus." She answered with authority in her voice, "there's no large potentially hostile terrestrial life forms near the Tardis so you can choose to go out for a bit of fresh air or you can choose to stay in here while we replace the component. Just don't go running off out of sight on your own. The Tardis likes landing in interesting times. They stick out like bright shiny baubles on a Christmas tree to her. Don't they, old girl? Yes." In a moment of complete impropriety she petted the console.

That seemed at last to settle Ian into submission. Or make him nervous enough to want to leave in a hurry. "Come on, Barbara; let's take a bit of a look around." He shot a last look at the Doctor. This was a look somewhere akin to resigned pity. "I'll leave you to it, Doctor. Come on, Barbara."

"Excuse me," Susan went up to this Missus character, "what do you mean, 'Missus'?"  
The woman bent slightly to address Susan and smiled, "In a way I'm your grandmother."  
Susan laughed, "Oh, you're not my grandmother. You can't be. You're nothing like her at all."  
Missus just smiled, "well, no, not your real grandmother, sweetheart, but I will be a grandmother of yours one day."

"Go on child." The Doctor urged Susan, "I'll be with you shortly."

Susan frowned in thought and headed out of the Tardis to be with Ian and Barbara.

* * *

For a moment Missus stood there looking at the Doctor with a wistful look, "she really is beautiful." Her gentle smile turned manic and that madness he'd seen earlier in her eyes was growing again.

Without another word Missus sprang to action as was her energetic habit and seized the spare component from where the Doctor had placed it on the console earlier. "Wanna see where we are for a change, Doctor?" She larked, tossing up the coil into the air and catching it with a wild grin on her face.  
"Will you kindly not do that, please." The Doctor frowned at her, terribly unnerved, watching the precious replacement Sterometer component in danger of being smashed on the floor, "that is a rare piece of technology not readily available on just any old planet."

Missus made a hissing noise. "I knew you'd be a strict so and so in your youth I just knew it." She handed it to him.  
Hitching his breath the Doctor knelt down and got under the console, lifting off the panel to get to the component that needed replacing. Arthritic pain chose this moment to sweep over his fingers holding the coil. He took a sharp breath in.  
"Oh, dear, let me." The woman offered gently, sitting down by his side and leaned right across him to pull out the old coil.

This close the Doctor caught a clear whiff of Artron energy from her. "You've regenerated within the last twenty four hours." He said in quiet surprise.  
"Yeah." She answered, taking the new coil from him and reaching inside the panel to connect it. "I'm supposed to be dead, but I'm not. But I don't think I came back right."  
"From my understanding it can be quite difficult. Under the wrong circumstances, sometimes to the severity of nearly traumatic."  
"Oh, I've got worse problems than all that, sunshine." She discounted.  
The Doctor blinked at her. "I believed my summary was sufficient to cover all the distinctive possibilities."

Missus closed up the hatch. Her posture was stiff and her breathing was restricted. If he didn't know better he might think she was having a case of arthritic pain herself.

"Doctor." She said quietly. From his sideview he could see that there was a pained and laboured look on her face. "I don't care how young you are ..." She stopped, still staring at the panel and not facing him directly, "okay, so maybe not 'that' young." She shook her head, "you are my husband. I'm desperately trying but I'm not sure how much longer I can hold out for." She turned to face him and he could see that madness clearly in her eyes. "I need you to do your duty."

'Duty.'

The Doctor's brain reeled with this information. He had heard of this side effect sometimes happening for Gallifreyan women when they'd newly regenerated but in this case the situation was a bit unnerving. "My dear, I am eight hundred years old and I haven't even met you yet." He fretted, trying to formulate a plan to help her.  
The woman's face contorted before she forced control again and her face went steadfast. "You really are young!" She hissed quietly. "But you will meet me. It's just a matter of time."  
"I am too old for this."  
"No; you're not old enough." She countered holding up her right hand up for him.

The suffering in her telepathic field and aura was real. The Doctor couldn't help but be taken with her endearing character as well. There was a solemnity in his mind as he made his decision. She was his wife even though she was from his future. Her telepathic aura matched his perfectly on the axis of purpose. A sense of contentment filled him and the Doctor raised his hand to meet with hers.

Through the connection he could feel her telepathic field entwining with his. There was a gentle, transient sweetness to her, a caring forgiving heartedness. Her defence barrier was only skin deep.  
"You are perfect." He breathed in intoxication.  
"Doctor." She sighed and reached her other hand up to his cheek. "I need you."

The Tardis hissed around them and there was a build-up in the engine power. The Doctor looked wildly at the console over their heads. "Oh, help me to-."  
Missus grabbed his arm and practically yanked him up off the floor. "What is that? I dunno!" She exclaimed, "Looks like a build up in ..." she gasped and the Doctor reached out to help her but had to stop when he realised it was just her Artron energy lighting up her body again.

This time however the power intensified till Missus was a bright ball of yellow light and the Doctor had to shield his eyes. The Tardis console had completely powered up in response and the engines were working without the ship ever dematerialising.

"You've found me." He heard Missus say in a calmed tone of relief.

A moment and the light had returned to normal. The Doctor looked around the control room and knew that Missus was now gone. The Tardis hummed quietly around him.  
The Doctor's eyes fell back to the console. She had disappeared through his timeline and the action had been completed with the Tardis' own time circuits.

The Lady, his Lady, would come back to him one day. He just needed to wait for her.


	4. Changing Hearts 4

_A/n: Listen very carefully. I shall edit this only once._

* * *

**MANIC MOMENT**

* * *

"She can't be dead, she can't be she-just-can't!" The Doctor gritted, "I can't-I won't let this happen. Not again, not this time." He spun around the Tardis console. The control room was darkly lit with blue and red lights. The Tardis was calculating the problem but not nearly fast enough for his horror and panic. "Don't you understand?" He begged his ship. "She's perfect!" He closed his eyes. She'd been injured, she'd made it to the Tardis, she had to still be alright. She had to still be in the Tardis. "Please, please-please-please-please."

* * *

A moment passed and the Tardis beeped. "Analysis complete. Subject located."  
The Doctor raised his head and opened his eyes in a feeling of sheer relief. "Thank you!" He gasped and operated the system without touching the dematerialisation switch. The Tardis' engine laboured and then a bright ray of Artron energy made the Doctor shield his eyes. He squinted as the light took a shape and with an overwhelmed sense of relief he grabbed at the nearly physical form of his mate.

"There you are." He hugged her tightly, heaving a sigh of intense relief. "I don't ever want to lose you."  
"Doctor," she muttered soberly and he pulled slightly away from her in shock at the differing voice, looking down at her.  
"You've regenerated." He gaped at her. Her now blue eyes studied him steadily, hungrily from under strawberry blonde ringlets of hair. She was nearly his height now.  
His memory of her voice echoed up out of the depths.

_'I need you to do your duty.'_

After hundreds of years to think about this duty of his he had a plan formulated and waiting. Gently the Doctor reached his hands up to touch her face and connected to her mind.

What he discovered made him shake. This was no psychological illusion. The issue wasn't just invented in her head.

"I can't fix it." He stared at her, "not telepathically. It's just not possible. The regeneration has affected every-."  
"What's wrong with me, Doctor?"  
"There's nothing wrong with you." He insisted, "You're perfect." He found himself shaking with the understanding of how little power he had, "my Missus. My wife."  
"What else!" She demanded in a voice near to a screech. He knew the sound of this tone very well. It was the one his wife used when the alien ship was crashing and the lights were flickering, when they had ten minutes of oxygen left and the hostile invasion force would be on them in five, "there's gotta be something else!" It really couldn't be any clearer than that of her desperate need. His wife needed his help.

"There is one thing." The Doctor held out his hand. Quietly grabbing her fingers he headed down into the depths of the Tardis.

* * *

The Doctor took her to the door of his bedroom and in one definite motion he let her hand go and stepped a respectful distance away from her.

"What's this then?" She asked, hopeful but weary, "you've got that scary look on your face. I don't like that look pointed at me. I thought you said this could help?"  
"Sorry." He turned his head away from her and stepped to press the button for the door. It slid open and he took two paces into the dark homey comfort of his navy decorated bedroom and his wrought iron bed frame before twisting on his foot to see her standing in the doorway.

"There's one shot." He started off, "a full telepathic link will rectify the exchange differential."  
"I thought you said you couldn't fix the problem with telepathy."  
He rubbed the back of his head. She always caught him out. "There's a slim chance it might work." He hesitated.  
"And you brought me down here because ...?"  
"Well, there's the other side of the coin." He said with dignity, "a full telepathic link will rectify the exchange differential." He found himself repeating, "Either way it comes up we're in this together. Unle-."

She glided in and stood in front of him.

* * *

His wife was gazing at him with nothing but love in her eyes. The Doctor couldn't be any more overwhelmed with how perfect she was.

"Unless." He tried again, "you think you can manage without me." He croaked the words; it needed to be an option for her.  
"I can't." Her answer came simply. His wife shrugged with a smile and a small shake of her head. "We've been through all that, silly. We stick together. Whatever it is, however it comes out."

The Doctor glanced at the open doorway behind his wife and the light of the corridor behind. "Right, well ..." he gathered his resolve, "either way I'm gonna be feeling guilty about it, so there's no point holding out ..." He held up his right hand for hers and she matched him.

His nerve endings sizzled with the physical connection. He'd be resting if he were in her state of so much unsettled Artron energy. He drew his other hand up to her face and she mimicked the action, pressing her soft fingers against his face.

* * *

Memories swam between them; aliens, planets, explosions, classrooms, football, gymnastics, red grass, orange skies, twin suns, purple moons, city scapes, faces, songs, sounds.

The Doctor sensed his mind spiralling down into the primal levels where the trouble was coming from and the memories shifted in theme. He forced them up and out, away from baby cries and tiny feet, little voices and tiny cuddles back to colliding asteroids and nebula dust.

At some unknown moment the two of them were content and the connection eased. Eventually they were standing apart.

* * *

"It worked!" The Doctor grinned at her, his mind dizzy with all the mental reshuffling, "How about that, eh?" He spun around her and headed for the door.

"Doctor."

He heard her call as he reached his hand up and pressed the button to close the door, plunging the room into twilight. He spun around, his thoughts finally settling, realisation of what he'd just done dawning.

"I just closed the door." He stated the obvious with a bit of shock.


	5. Changing Hearts 5

_A/n: M Rated. Skip if unnecessary. In either case sweet dreams._

* * *

**M RATED**

* * *

"I'm still feeling it." His wife said also a little needlessly.

Her words made the Doctor look up at her and he found her action of taking a step back from him and closer to his bed hypnotic. The inspiration struck him to take off his jacket.

In the navy gloom the ringlets of her hair gave a definition to her face even though her features were so vague. Her regeneration had brought out tall genes and she was definitely on the skinny side.  
"I made you a Time Lord." He felt his binary hearts picking up in pace, "I made you regenerate."  
"Oh, you know very well it wasn't you who fired that shot. And it wasn't you who made me a Time Lord, it was the Tardis."  
"That shot was meant for me." Even as he argued he stepped forwards with a physical eagerness that was no longer in hibernation.  
"Still not your fault." She waved it off in the dark gloom.

He caught her airborne hand and kissed her fingers. A weak whimper escaped her lips.  
Blood was rushing but not to his head.

"After all that could you think of anything more I could do to you?" He asked her before diving for her lips.

There was a tremble in her body and her hands reached and pulled him in tighter. He broke the kiss to trail kisses along her cheek and down her neck. Every nip had the distinct taste of Artron energy but her definite personal flavour was coming up as well. She moaned, arching her body and he slid his hands down her back to her waist. His mind went spiralling down into her reproductive biological functions without his permission and it wasn't coming back up easily.

"I think I'm gonna die." His wife groaned.  
"Well, w'can't have that." He grunted, sliding his hands up her back and taking grip of the dress's zipper.

Her feverish hands worked on the buttons of his shirt. The motion of getting the loose clothes and her lingerie off made him hungry to taste her again and he snatched her into his arms, spinning the two of them around the metal corner post to the side of the bed. Taste. His lips locked with hers, her mouth opened slightly and he ventured his tongue for a deeper taste. He ran his idle hands up her willowed waist to cup her breasts.

Her breathing was erratic now, he could feel her hearts racing and she groped him back. Her hand found his erection and she broke from the kissing with a gasp, tumbling out of his arms backwards on the bed.  
The sight of her so ready, gazing up in a haze of hormonal smoke coming from her burning continuity drive was intoxicating like twin moons shining over a glittering life-filled sea.

"Husband." Her voice had a laboured tone to it, "I really think now would be a good time."  
To her prompting words he kicked off his trainers and dropped his trousers. Her legs curled up invitingly around him as he levered himself down over her. With his eyes closed he pressed in for one final taste of her lips before the pressure overtook him.

Her muscles flexed around him on his entry and as he worked on her. The feeling of her was splendid, wonderful, fantastic, brilliant, and marvellous. Why, oh how could he have managed a thousand years without feeling like this again? Pleasure thundered through him and he pumped inside her.

"Oh, my wife" was all he could utter, drawing away to her side. She was the single most incredible wondrous creature in the universe and it was the most indescribable yet the most described feeling that he had for her. He could hold her forever.

She got unsteadily off the bed. "Oh my god, where's the bathroom?" She asked in a shaking white panic.  
"It's... it's over there." The Doctor pointed over to the left to his ensuite door and his wife rushed off without another word, stumbling through the gloom as she went.

A slow horror balled into the pit of his stomach. The Doctor listened to the rush of water from the sink. There was a moment of silence and then there was the sound of retching.

The Doctor cringed.


	6. Changing Hearts 6

_A/n: Listen very carefully. I shall edit this only once._

* * *

**A PROPER TIME LORD**

* * *

There was nothing the Doctor could do about her feeling sick.

The Doctor sighed regretfully and got up from his navy coloured bedsheets. His solid wood cupboard that he'd rescued from the Foreman Junkyard long ago stood in the corner of his bedroom and he reached for the handle of the door.

He pulled out a dressing gown and put it on, then he took out a second one and headed to the bathroom with it.

* * *

The Doctor found her on the cold floor sitting against the wall not too far from the toilet.  
"Getting better?" He asked softly, approaching her.  
"Ugh. Don't make me nod." She groaned weakly.

All he could do was hold the fluffy green dressing gown out, offering to fit it on her. Gingerly she slid up the wall and accepted the gown and then she moved back to the sink, twisting the knob and sipping up the water.

After all these years the Doctor still tried to make sense of it. "Do you know what happened?"  
She straightened, her hands gripping the corners of the sink. "Yep" was her single worded answer.

"Yeah." The Doctor gritted unhappily, at the same time taking in how his dressing gown wrapped around her thin form twice and yet she still looked lovely in it standing by the glossy white rectangular sink. "That's just what my first wife said." He leaned back against the wall. "Time Lord proper, she was. 'It doesn't concern me therefore I should not meddle'. That's how a Time Lord's meant to be." He mocked bitterly, "It's this thing that's ingrained into us. I even taught it to my own daughter." He closed his eyes. "Time Lords; the greatest observers of all of time, space and relative dimensions. Never doing anything to help, just ... watching."

"I think it's settling down now." His wife sighed. "Wow."

Her last word caught on the Doctor's mind and he pulled away from the wall. 'Wow' wasn't usually a word associated with a violent digestive reaction. "Wow?" He repeated her word in confusion.  
The now strawberry blonde Time Lord that was also his wife turned to him slowly, "what, she didn't use that word?"  
"No." He answered flatly. "Like I said: Time Lord proper."  
"So what?" Her face contorted in mild fury, "she ran off, threw up, went 'yep' and carried on?"  
"Yep." He answered emptily.

"You don't do that."  
The Doctor blinked, "I think it's a bit different for men and women."  
"No, silly!" She clasped her head, "oh, don't make me laugh, please, oh, my poor head."  
He wanted to hold her but then again he wasn't sure if she wanted to thump him or not. "What's going on with your head?"  
"Spinning." She muttered. "I meant about what you said, you help people you don't just stand by and watch. I mean, where'd you learn that if it's not a Time Lordly thing?"  
"From a human." He answered, "I had no possible idea of why I was so utterly dissatisfied with my own existence until I travelled with Ian Chesterton. I've always been better for it, going about things his way. He was a brilliant teacher. Science wasn't his strongest suite but he was a brilliant teacher."

"Oh." His wife smiled gently and hugged the Doctor, resting her head on his shoulder. "Ian, huh?"  
With nervousness he raised his arms and hugged her back. "Feeling better?" He asked softly into her hair.  
"Yes." She answered, "The temporal axis has stopped now. Didn't take too long. Could've taken ... well, who knows."  
"What taken what?" The Doctor exclaimed over her head, "what temporal axis?"

Pulling away from him she moved on to the doorway, "I dunno how to describe it properly, but ... well of course it would happen like that. I mean ... how could it not?" She eyed him up and down, "you are loaded, after all."  
"What do you mean?" He frowned at her, feeling a little self conscious, "I'm not a cargo ship."  
"Sunshine." She said fondly, "just take it as a compliment."

"You threw up." He disagreed, "on any account-."  
"I'm fine now!" She said in a strong voice, straightening her back. The colour had been gradually coming back into her face and it was now as if nothing had happened in either her posture or her telepathic field.

He gaped at her fast recovery. "It's the strangest thing. Perhaps it's because it hasn't been twenty four hours since you regenerated."  
His wife shook her strawberry blonde locks and smiled. "Come on then, how about a cuppa? That'll settle my stomach down properly and you can warn me about the Time Lord version of morning sickness." She disappeared out of the room.

The Doctor stood there scratching his head. "Blimey. Women wanna talk but it's never about 'that'."  
He took a step towards the door when his wife bounded back into the room and grabbed him into a hug. The force of her inertia made them spin around on the spot and then she planted her mouth on his in a joyful kiss.

"You wonderful, charming man." She stated. "I'll stay with you forever even if I have to throw up every day." She grabbed his hands with a chuckle, "it's worth every bit of it." Her eyes sparkled with happiness and he could tell she absolutely meant it. "Come on."


End file.
